Saturday, April 15, 2017

A priest is being asked to take a break from his parish in the small
Italian town of Montesilvano after some in his congregation reportedly
stormed out of Mass when he openly criticized Pope Francis on Palm
Sunday.Media reports claimed the congregation shouted “Shame, shame!” at Fr.
Edward Pushparaj when he said Pope Francis had only been “bad” for the
Catholic Church.

Palm Sunday commemorates the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem and is a
solemn occasion on the Christian calendar that marks the start of Holy
Week and the run-up to Easter Sunday.

But the episode has forced the local bishop, Archbishop Tommaso
Valentinetti of the Archdiocese of Pescara-Penne, to intervene; he has
pledged to meet the disgruntled parishioners from St. Anthony of Padua
parish.

“Preaching is one of the main activities in the ministry of a
priest,” Valentinetti said. “It is a service linked to meditation on the
Word of the day, the liturgy, and certainly cannot relate to personal
judgments, especially when they are not in communion with the pope.”

In his homily Pushparaj, who is from India, reportedly referred to
the pope’s dialogue with other faiths and in particular his decision to
wash the feet of a Muslim woman at a detention center outside Rome on
Holy Thursday in 2013, Francis’s first as pope.

“In four years Pope Francis has only been bad for the church,” the priest reportedly said.

According to Italian media reports, Pushparaj’s parishioners have
been complaining about the priest for some weeks and claim he has
criticized the pope’s exhortation on the family, AmorisLaetitia, or “The Joy of Love.”

Francis has often come under withering criticism from conservative
Catholics over his efforts to set the church on a more pastoral path
that is less focused on rules and older rites and traditions.

The archbishop said he hoped Pushparaj was just weary and in need of a rest.

“I think it’s fair to ask the priest to take some time to rest and
release him, temporarily, from his pastoral duties,” Valentinetti said
in the article on the archdiocesan site.